


roses in the wind

by underherspell



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Childhood, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Ghost Rey, Human Ben, Little Rey & Ben, Memory Loss, somewhat character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 11:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19131103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underherspell/pseuds/underherspell
Summary: “Oh. Are you a ghost?”Rey looks down into her milk and blows on it, watching her reflection distort in the white ripples while she contemplates her answer. When the liquid stills, she nods once, looks at Ben and says, “Yes.”





	roses in the wind

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the film "the others" (y'all should watch it it's really good) and "the call" by ruu campbell.

i. four years old:

 A dark haired boy throws fistfuls of white pillow feathers into the morning light, watching them fall like a halo around a freckle nosed girl. She giggles as one catches on her eyelashes, picks it off and blows it into the boy’s round face.

 

 She looks pretty when she smiles. He tells her as much. Creaking hinges penetrate their magical sanctuary of light and giddy childish laughter, a warm melody broken at the chorus, and a kind face peeks through the doorway.

 

 “Who are you talking to, Ben?” The woman smiles fondly at the sight of her son lying on white sheets strewn with feathers that still descend gracefully from the air. His little friend casts a sideways glance at him, unease etched into her small features.

 

 “It’s Rey, Mama! I met her on my birthday, can’t you see her?” Leia’s brow creases as Ben points with a chubby finger at nothing. Rey touches his arm gently, then slides off the bed and slips past the woman in the doorway.

 

 (She stops momentarily to consider the carved white door of a spare room before rushing off again.)

 

 Ben stumbles after her, running as fast as his legs will carry him to chase after the girl only he can see.

 

 “Rey, wait!” He cries, slides on the polished wood of the lengthy corridor and looks left and right to find her – a glimpse of her little white dress disappearing around the corner, the sound of her bare feet pattering on the darkwood floor.

 

 But he doesn’t see anything, he doesn’t hear anything. She vanishes like a sparrow in a storm.

 

 “You scared her away,” he pouts at his frowning mother, and grips tightly onto the rail as he goes down the spiraling staircase one step at a time, stout legs too tiny to alternate feet. She’ll come back, he thinks, if he tempts her with a glass of honey and milk.

 

ii. six years old:

 A dark haired boy runs into the kitchen and finds a girl sitting at the table. She wears a plain white dress, and her dirty feet dangle from the chair beneath her, too short yet to touch the floor. In her small left hand is a glass of honey and milk.

 

 “Who are you?” He asks the stranger. Her pink lips turn downwards into a frown, but it goes away as quickly as it appears and she says simply, “I’m Rey.”

 

 “Oh. I’m Ben.” His hair, painstakingly combed back that morning by his mother, now falls into his dark eyes. He absently pushes it back with a sweaty palm as he bites his lip, eyeing the mysterious girl drinking milk in his kitchen. “How did you get here?” He asks finally.

 

 “I’ve always been here.”

 

 “Oh. Are you a ghost?”

 

 Rey looks down into her milk and blows on it, watching her reflection distort in the white ripples while she contemplates her answer. When the liquid stills, she nods once, looks at Ben and says, “Yes.”

 

 “Oh.” He pushes his hair back again, then holds out a small hand. “It’s nice to meet you, ghost Rey.”

 

 “It’s nice to meet you too, not ghost Ben.” And she ignores the way her stomach seems to tie itself into a knot as she shakes his sweaty hand.

 

 He acquaints himself with her anew as he stands on his tiptoes to pour himself a glass of milk without honey, splashing a little bit onto the countertop because his wrist shakes under the weight of the glass bottle, and they talk about their favorite fairy tales while they finish their drinks, and run outside to play with white upper lips.

 

 She looks up at the window of the spare room visible from where they race in the garden, and nearly forgets that his memories of her will disappear again, in the smoke of the candles he’ll soon have to blow out on his special cake.

 

iii. eight years old:

 A dark haired boy holds the hand of his freckle nosed best friend as the cook carries a white frosted cake from the kitchen to the dining room. His mother affectionately squeezes his shoulders behind him, before striking a match and lighting up the eight candles adorning the sugary surface.

 

 She has to put it out, however, after igniting the first four lest she burn her fingertips. Rey’s teeth bite hard on her tongue. Ben grins at her and tightens his sweaty grip on her hand, but she flexes her fingers and pulls them out of his grasp, smiling encouragingly when he furrows his brow at her.

 

 Leia strikes another match and lights the remaining four candles. Rey moves towards the back of the room, hidden slightly by children visible to everyone and digging her nails into her palm when Ben takes a deep breath, waits three eternal seconds, and blows on the eight little flames casting their warm glow over his face.

 

 It suddenly gets very cold as the handful of his friends and their mothers cheer and laugh.

 

 (Her gaze is pulled to the top of the staircase and an empty feeling floods her chest.)

 

 After the party, Rey sits in Ben’s room upstairs. The stars twinkle at her through the open window and a breeze she cannot feel rustles his bedsheets. She absently picks at a slice of cake on a paper plate with her fingers. The door hinges creak as an eight year old boy steps inside and sees a girl sitting with her knees to her chest on the floor. She wears a plain white dress that looks vaguely familiar.

 

 “Happy birthday.” She says, looking at him over her shoulder and licking creamy frosting off her index finger.

 

 “Who are you? And what are you doing in my room?” He sounds much more wary this time. _Good_ , she thinks, _he should be afraid of a ghost girl_.

 

 She smiles as he comes closer, and extends a sticky hand to him, “I’m Rey, and I’m always in your room.”

 

 “That sounds creepy,” he stares at her hand, finger shining with saliva where she licked the sugary frosting. He grabs it suddenly and gives it a firm shake. “I’m Ben. For some reason, I’m not afraid of you, Rey.”

 

 She smiles wider as he sits down next to her, digging his finger into her slice of cake and popping a piece of the sponge into his mouth.

 

 The stars twinkle at them both now, and a breeze she cannot feel sweeps through the window and blows Ben’s hair over his dark eyes. She looks at him for a moment, then reaches up and pushes it back with a sweaty palm.

 

iv. ten years old:

 A dark haired boy leans out of his bedroom window, watching the setting sun appear and disappear behind soft salmon clouds as the sparrows chirp outside and search for food in the Cedar trees. Occasionally, one would land on his windowsill and stare at him with small black eyes – cock its head once, twice – before flying off again.

 

 He pushes himself off the floor and shuts the window, leaving his room drowned in shades of grapefruit and peach. His knees ache for staying in the same position for so long. He strolls down the long corridor out of sheer boredom, until he arrives at a spare room, twisting the crystalline knob and entering a world of white. White sheets drape over items of furniture they don’t use and somewhere in the back of his mind he sees white feathers thrown into a stream of sunlight, white milk staining the upper lip of a small child.

 

 “Hi.” He jumps upon hearing the voice, eyes rapidly darting around the crowded room to locate the source.

 

 A girl, he sees, no older than himself, with freckles on her nose and wearing a plain white dress. Feathers and milk. She walks casually among the hidden furniture, trailing her fingertips along the virginal sheets as she gets closer and closer to him.

 

 “I’m Rey. I’m a ghost.” She deadpans, but the expression on his face makes her snort with laughter. He reacts differently each time she tells him (not that he’d remember, anyway.)

 

 “I–I’m Ben.” He stutters awkwardly, but holds out a trembling hand to shake hers nonetheless. Another new beginning. Feathers and milk.

 

 Rey wanders to a shelf full of odd knick-knacks at the back of the room, bends down to get a closer look at a miniature sailboat and says, “Alright, Ben. Anything worth looking at in here?”

 

 “I don’t know,” He peers over her shoulder to see her picking up a small marble chess piece from beside the sailboat, a bishop. “I don’t come in here that often. Let’s look around.”

 

 They fiddle with things they find on the shelf and pull sheets off of furniture to see what lies beneath. Rey tugs the cover off an elegant full length mirror, tracing the intricate carvings on it’s dark wooden frame with her fingers and wrapping the sheet around her shoulders like a shawl, twirling in front of her reflection in the clear glass.

 

 She spins around when she hears a sharp inhale from Ben, finds him cradling what appears to be a large firefly in a jar, glowing brightly despite the tangerine light peeking through a gap in the closed curtains.

 

 “A firefly?” He looks at her with eyes full of wonder.

 

 A delicate sort of urge tugs on Rey’s conscience as she watches it crawl along the interior of the glass – an urge to let it go, to see it fly away with the birds and the butterflies in the summer air and live the remainder of its life in blissful freedom. Her hands reach for the jar and pull it from Ben’s grasp, ignoring his protests behind her as her bare feet pitter patter down the corridor. She goes into his room and pries the window open.

 

 Ben kneels on the floor again, elbows resting on the windowsill. Rey unscrews the metal lid with a heavy heart and an inexplicable emptiness in her chest. The lid clatters to the ground, amber sunlight reflecting off of it and casting shimmers around the white walls. The firefly tentatively inches toward the opening, before speeding out the window like greased lightning.

 

 They smile as they watch it depart, blending in with the trees and the summer haze.

 

 But then Rey’s fingers begin to tingle, prickles and pins climbing up her arms and–

 

  _Oh_ , she realizes.

 

 Her left hand grows numb, cold skin turning into a cluster of brilliant little lights and Ben looks back to find his new friend glowing like a silver star. Feathers and milk burn even brighter in his mind. Eyes wide, he reaches out with shaking fingers, hand falling through the flare where he should have touched skin and he urgently asks, “What is this? What’s happening to you?” Rey laughs to suppress a cry.

 

 “I don’t think that was a firefly.” A small sniffle, “I always wondered what was tying me to this place, I suppose now I know, I’ve been trapped in that room all along.”

 

 “But–”

 

 Rey gives him a wide smile, eyes crinkling like two little crescent moons despite the tremble of her bottom lip and says, “Thanks for being my friend, Ben. I’m glad I got to know you all these years.” And he doesn’t get the chance to ask her what she means, because all that remains of her is wispy silver light that drifts out of his bedroom window and becomes one with the rosy skies.

 

 “No– wait!” He swings both legs out of the opening, trying to get as close to the clouds as he can without falling down, reaching for the shimmer that gets farther and farther away from him as if he could pull it back by sheer force of will. He loses sight of it somewhere between the emerald trees and the blush twilight, arms falling limply to his side in desolate surrender. He doesn’t think he’ll ever feel this hollow again in his life.

 

 A sparrow lands on his knee – cocks its head once, twice – and a whisper of a little girl with light brown hair and breath that smelled of honey and milk gripping his hand as they run through the garden of his house flickers behind his eyes like damaged film. Who was she?

 

 (A dark haired boy turns eleven, blows out the candles on his cake and any memory he retains of a ghost girl turning to light before his eyes is carried away on the wisps of smoke that arise from the eleven snuffed out flames. He laughs when his friends cheer, but he can’t help the peculiar feeling that he’s forgotten something he shouldn’t have.)


End file.
